Tag "Pollution"

Tiny fragments of plastic in the ocean are consumed by sea anemones along with their food, and bleached anemones retain these microfibers longer than healthy ones, according to new research from Carnegie’s Manoela Romanó de Orte, Sophie Clowez, and Ken Caldeira.
Anemones are closely related to corals and can help scientists understand how coral reef ecosystems are affected by millions of tons of plastic contaminating the world’s oceans.
One of the most-common types of plastics in the ocean are microfibers from washing synthetic clothing and from the breakdown of maritime equipment such as ropes and nets.
Since sea anemones are closely related to corals, we decided to study sea anemones in the laboratory to better understand effects of plastics on corals in the wild.”
On corals reefs, bleaching is caused by increasing ocean temperatures due to global climate change.
The research team introduced three different kinds of microfibers — nylon, polyester, and polypropylene — to both unbleached and bleached sea anemones both alone and mixed with brine shrimp.
They found that when introduced alone, nylon was consumed by about a quarter of the unbleached anemones and the other two microfibers were not taken up at all.
But when the microfibers were mixed with brine shrimp, about 80 percent of the unbleached anemones ingested all three microfibers.
However, in a natural marine environment, anemones and coral would continually be reintroduced to new microfibers, making the contamination a chronic condition of their existence. “When the reefs are bleached by hot ocean temperatures, the organisms are more likely to eat and retain plastic microfibers.

Scott Morrison’s recent pivot on climate policy is unlikely to have a positive impact on Australia’s emissions profile because it fails to grapple with the underlying drivers of increased pollution, according to a new analysis by the Investor Group on Climate Change.
The IGCC, a group that represents institutional investors such as super funds, with total funds under management of about $2tn, has told its members Morrison’s “climate solutions package” won’t change the current trajectory of rising emissions because it is “small scale and unlikely to be a durable policy framework through time”.
“In the absence of this, policy uncertainty will be increased, the necessary investment in zero emissions generation will be delayed and upward pressure will continue on electricity prices,” the new paper warns.
The Morrison government is counting a 367-megatonne contribution from carry-over credits – an accounting system that allows countries to count carbon credits from exceeding their targets under the soon-to-be-obsolete Kyoto protocol periods against their Paris commitment for 2030 – to help meet the 2030 target.
The IGCC notes taht there is currently a gap between the targets that countries have set, and actions required to achieve the objectives of the Paris agreement.
“For investors this is concerning because the economic and social impacts of current projected levels of climate change risk investment returns and economic prosperity over the longer-term,” the paper says.
“The use of carryover to weaken Australia’s emissions commitments is also fundamentally at odds with limiting warming in line with the objectives of the Paris agreement and driving global momentum for coordinated, and increased ambition,” the paper says.
It says that if the ALP uses the same accounting as the government, factoring in a 367-megatonne contribution in its carbon budget, Labor’s 45% emissions reduction target would become a 35% target.
The safeguards mechanism – part of the Direct Action scheme, which is at the centre of Morrison’s recent climate redux – sets emissions “baselines”, or limits, for big polluters.
The mechanism is supposed to ensure pollution cuts paid for through the taxpayer-funded emissions reduction fund – rebadged by Morrison last week as the “climate solutions fund” – are not undone by a blowout in emissions in other parts of the economy.

One of President Donald Trump’s stated justifications for rolling back environmental regulations has been to bring back jobs in highly-polluting industries like coal. “The share of pollution risk accruing to minority groups generally exceeds their share of employment and greatly exceeds their share of higher paying jobs.
In aggregate, we find no evidence that facilities that create higher pollution risk for surrounding communities provide more jobs,” the study concluded.
By the numbers, black Americans hold 10.8 percent of the jobs at industrial facilities, but suffer 17.4 percent of the exposure to air pollution.
Monday’s study comes a little more than six months after a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study found that race and not poverty was the greatest predictor of exposure to certain air pollutants from the oil industry.
Despite such findings, the EPA has severely reduced the size of its Office of Environmental Justice under the Trump administration.
Monday’s study was also published the same day as an in-depth report by Stateline for the Huffington Post looking at the individual consequences of this kind of environmental racism.
The report focused on the town of Uniontown, Alabama, where its 2,300 low-income, majority black residents are exposed to a landfill that accepts coal ash, a cheese factory that emits a noxious smell and dumps waste into a local creek and wastewater from a catfish processing factory that contributes to an overburdened sewer system that leaks fecal matter into streams and rivers. “Look at every black community or poor community,” resident Esther Calhoun who has been involved with several lawsuits against the offending polluters told Stateline.
Pollution, Race and the Search for Justice https://t.co/OMWQS2NkNg @greenpeaceusa @foodandwater @ClimateReality @YEARSofLIVING — EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) 1520265171.0

Emissions of CO2 and methane from wetlands and thawing permafrost as the climate warms could cut the “carbon budget” for the Paris agreement temperature limits by around five years, a new study says. ‘Engines for Turning CO2 Into Methane’ Over the last year or so, there has been a flurry of new carbon budget studies—using slightly different approaches to estimate how much CO2 we can emit and still hold global temperature rise to no more than 1.5°C or 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
Many of these studies use global climate models to make their estimates.
Permafrost is the name given to soil that has been frozen for at least two years.
With permafrost, for example, “this not only improves our estimates of the carbon stored in soils at high latitudes, but also allows us to estimate how much of this soil will be lost as the permafrost regions thaw,” Comyn-Platt told Carbon Brief.
In their “control” model runs with no permafrost or wetland feedbacks, the researchers estimate the 1.5°C budget at 720bn-929bn tonnes of CO2 from the beginning of 2018—equivalent to 20-25 years of emissions at current rates.
This is slightly higher than some recent budgets because the JULES model tends to simulate a large amount of carbon uptake from the land surface, explained Comyn-Platt, freeing up space for more CO2 emissions in the budget.
The researchers then used the model to simulate the response of permafrost and natural wetlands to climate change.
When the additional CO2 and methane emissions are incorporated, the available carbon budget shrinks substantially—falling to 533bn-753bn tonnes of CO2 for 1.5°C, or 14-20 years of emissions.
He told Carbon Brief: “The extra carbon released from thawing permafrost and warming wetlands would continue beyond the date of net-zero emissions and this would need to be countered for in order to consider carbon budgets applicable for 2100 and beyond.”

The Trump administration’s plan to bail out coal and nuclear industries could cause one American death from pollution for every two to four additional coal jobs generated over the next two years, according to new research.
A study released Thursday from Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan think tank, finds that the plan could cause between 353 to 815 premature deaths between 2019 and 2020 while generating fewer than 800 coal jobs.
The study also finds that the plan would increase CO2 emissions by 22 million tons, or roughly the same amount as 4.3 million additional cars on the road.
As reported by Bloomberg: Although nuclear power does not generate carbon dioxide that drives climate change, burning coal does—and the possible federal intervention would boost those emissions by 22 million short tons over two years, the analysis finds.
The administration is justifying its push to subsidize coal and nuclear power plants on national security grounds, with Trump touting coal as bomb proof during a visit to a West Virginia charity dinner on Tuesday. “You bomb a pipeline, that’s the end of the pipeline,” Trump said. “With coal, that stuff is indestructible.”
Trump Administration Plans Costly Taxpayer Bailout of Unprofitable Energy Industries https://t.co/oDn4G7Fl6S… https://t.co/ZyvbkH6beZ — EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) 1527870150.0 For a deeper dive: For more climate change and clean energy news, you can follow Climate Nexus on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for daily Hot News.

A major study published Friday in The Lancet Planetary Health has confirmed a reported link between air pollution and diabetes in a big way, finding that particulate matter exposure can increase risk for the disease even at levels currently deemed safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the World Health Organization, CNN reported.
Evidence shows that current levels are still not sufficiently safe and need to be tightened,” study lead author and Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis assistant professor Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly said in a Washington University press release.
The study found that air pollution caused 3.2 million new diabetes cases globally in 2016, 14 percent of the year’s total cases, and causes 150,000 new cases in the U.S. every year. “This is a very well-done report, very believable, and fits well with this emerging knowledge about the impacts of air pollution on a series of chronic diseases,” said Dr. Philip Landrigan to CNN. “I think you can very directly link relaxation of air pollution control standards with increased sickness and death.”
Health experts believe pollution triggers diabetes by reducing insulin production and increasing inflammation, making it harder for the body to turn glucose into energy.
They then looked at previous air pollution studies to develop a model for risk at different pollution levels and used Global Burden of Disease data to determine yearly diabetes cases and years of life lost.
One key finding was that diabetes risk increases at particulate matter levels of 2.4 micrograms per cubic meter of air, while the current EPA safe limit is 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air.
That number rose to 24 percent among veterans exposed to 11.9 to 13.6 micrograms, an increase of 5,000 to 6,000 new diabetes cases per 100,000 people per year.
8 Ways to Reduce Your Exposure to Hormone-Disrupting Chemicals https://t.co/2aeD4FzGmZ @WomenHealthMag @goodhealth @naturallysavvy — EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) 1516413005.0

Thames Water will not pay its chief executive a bonus for the next two years and after that will link it to leak and pollution targets being met.
Even so, the company paid its chief executive, Steve Robertson, a £50,000 bonus last year.
But it is thought that, after pressure from the regulator, the firm has decided not to pay its boss a bonus for the next two years.
Thames Water hit with record £20m fine for huge sewage leaks Read more Robertson, who has been running Thames since September 2016, will have his 2020 bonus linked to the company achieving its leak targets, rather than financial performance.
He is expected to be in line for performance pay of up to £3.75m in 2020 but only if Thames hits 100% of its targets, which will not be easy.
He said the firm was fixing about 1,000 leaks a week and that senior managers would only be rewarded for reducing leaks when targets were hit.
Thames is expected to announce its new bonus structure when it publishes its annual report and results on Thursday.
Ofwat will hope that other water companies will also link their bonus plans to performance on leaks and customer service.
One of the highest-paid water bosses is Liv Garfield of Severn Trent, who got a bonus of £501,000 last year, and only part of it was linked to customer goals.
Ofwat has set all water companies a target of bringing down leakage by at least another 15% up to 2025 and expects further reductions thereafter.

Plans to drill rock 1.5 miles (2.4km) below ground to seek shale gas deposits in Derbyshire could increase traffic and pollution, an inquiry has heard.
A decision is expected on 29 June.
Approval for the scheme, which was launched by petrochemical company INEOS, seeks to begin exploratory mining and would see a 60-metre (197ft) tall drill erected on the site.
Gordon Steele, representing INEOS, said the appeal before the inquiry “is for exploratory mining, not fracking”.
If shale gas is found, then fracking could begin on the site, but this would require another planning application.
A bid to begin exploratory mining was rejected by the council’s planning committee in February.
The inquiry, held at the Assembly Rooms in Chesterfield, heard the proposed noise from the drilling would be 42 decibels (db). “If you think of hanging a motorbike from a crane in a quiet rural field and leave it running for three months, I think you’ll understand why we say that this is environmentally unacceptable,” he said.
Fracking involves injecting water and chemicals at high pressure into rocks to create tiny cracks, allowing the gas to flow up a well to the surface where it can be collected.
Planning inspector Elizabeth Hill will determine if the scheme is granted permission to go ahead.

Getty Images Alarmed by the sheer quantity of plastic clogging our oceans, the European Union is mulling ambitious new rules that would reduce or outrightly prohibit many everyday single-use plastic items.
Some of these items — like plastic straws, cotton buds, plates and disposable cutlery — will be banned completely under the new rules, which require the approval of the European Parliament and all 28 EU member states.
500,000 tonnes of EU plastic waste end up in the sea every year.
We can only solve this urgent issue together.
Improved waste management of abandoned and lost fishing gear, which accounts for almost 30 percent of Europe’s beach litter, is also mandated in the proposal.
“Single-use plastics are not a smart economic or environmental choice, and today’s proposals will help business and consumers to move towards sustainable alternatives.
We can create sustainable products that the world will demand for decades to come, and extract more economic value from our precious resources.#PlasticsStrategy #PassOnPlastic pic.twitter.com/19mCvxlJOq — European Commission 🇪🇺 (@EU_Commission) May 28, 2018 According to CNN Money, it could take three or four years for the rules to be enforced.
But if they are, the European Commission said the measures are expected have a profound financial and environmental impact.
“Having one set of rules for the whole EU market will create a springboard for European companies to develop economies of scale and be more competitive in the booming global marketplace for sustainable products,” the commission said in a press release.
Plastics Europe, a trade group representing European manufacturers, criticized the proposal, saying in a press release that “plastic product bans are not the solution” and “alternative products may not be more sustainable.”

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